@Articuno76:
here's a slightly abridged version of the gamergate events i found from reddit user throwaway823746. i think he attempts to be pretty unbiased and summarizes things pretty tidily. it sounds as if you want an authority figure to make a judgement, but we've already established that theres no real authority in video game journalism-none of these journalists or critics had any credentials to begin with. and obviously no video game journalist wants to come near this. so the only way of determining the right and wrong that you've expressed concern about is doing your own research and following up on the things you're reading. i've done it myself- you can too. use the below summary of GG as a starting point.
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reddit user throwaway823746:
I've been following the story for a few weeks now, and getting most of my information from the subreddit/r/kotakuinaction (which was formed because discussion was silenced on /r/gaming and other places here on reddit). I'll admit right now that I agree with most of the "gamergate" position but I'll give you the facts as I understand them.
First, some backstory:
Zoe Quinn and about 150 other gaming "professionals" (including a large number of gaming journalists and editors for their websites) were part of an exclusive google group intended to allow them to discuss gaming news privately and free from the public eye. In addition, many of these professionals had personal relationships with one another, of varying degrees. This includes supporting one another's patreon accounts or companies, dating or sexual relationships, and even being roommates. Whether or not this is "ethical journalism" or not, it's clear their professional lives and personal lives were deeply intertwined and this created a huge potential for conflicts of interest.
The beginning:
In mid-August Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend posted on his blog accusing Zoe of cheating on him. Specifically, he named 5 men in prominent positions in the game journalism community. Recently, Zoe had made a "video game" called Depression Quest. Objectively Depression Quest (DQ) is a bad game, and essentially consists of webpage hyperlinks organized into a "choose your own adventure" story. In spite of this, DQ was well reviewed on a number of gaming journalism websites like kotaku. When the allegations of cheating came to light, some people began to question whether or not her sexual relationships with journalists had anything to do with her good reviews. At this point the public was unaware of the extensive friendship network and google group.
The accusations:
Two major groups arose in response to the allegations. One group was focused primarily on finding out "how deep the rabbit hole goes" in terms of gaming journalism's perceived ethical indiscretions. The other group was focused primarily on harassing Zoe personally. The ethics group disagreed with the harassing group, but anonymous harassment is as old as the internet and that didn't stop the harassing group.
The response:
A few days later, more than a dozen articles appeared on a number of different gaming journalism websites which all contained the same basic message: "the gamer identity is dead". These articles accused "gamers" of being misogynistic man-children and essentially called for all rational non-haters to distance themselves from the identity. This elicited a response from three groups of the public.
The journalism ethics group from before went into red alert. They already suspected some kind of conflict of interest and back-room coordination in the gaming journalism industry. And a simultaneous, united front from a number of different websites seemed to be their smoking gun.
The harassment group also went into overdrive. Right around this time Anita Sarkeesian released her latest criticism of the video gaming industry. Lots of gamers had already taken issue with her approach, since she admitted to not being interested in games prior to raising $160,000 on kickstarter. They viewed her as an outsider and intruder into their hobby who didn't have the authority to level the kinds of criticisms she does. The harassment group promptly added Anita to their list of targets, which included a number of male gaming professionals as well as Anita and Zoe.
"Gamers" got mad. They weren't necessarily involved in this debate until now, but now have been smeared across the internet as being a bunch of hateful white males. Many of them began to become involved in the debacle, and inevitably some joined the "ethics" group while others joined the "harassment" group.
Simultaneously a fourth group got involved. These are the "social justice warriors". SJW is a caricature of followers of radical and/or misinformed feminism and other social justice movements. This group already had strong pre-existing beliefs about women's harassment and oppression under "the patriarchy", which they perceived to be hurting women given the fact that video game development is still a male-dominated industry.
The fight:
For a few weeks it all went to hell (and some would say we're still in it). The gaming press and their supporters continued the rhetoric that gamers were all misogynistic and horrible people. They made no distinction between the "journalism ethics" group and the "harassment" group and tried to dismiss the efforts of the ethics group as an attempt to deflect the conversation away from what really matters (to them) - the oppression and harassment of women.
Supporters of the ethics movement actually gathered a lot of support, as disgruntled (and diverse) gamers began using the hashtag #notyourshield to demonstrate that the ethics group had good points and that it consisted of much more than just a group of white guys. Women and POC posted in #notyourshield supporting the push for greater transparency and improved ethical standards in gaming journalism.
The harassment group began to lose interest after a while, and undoubtedly moved on to other things. Their job is done, in terms of creating strife and confusion. Jimmies were rustled and they had their laugh, and now sought further entertainment. The only remnants of their efforts were a few attempts to invalidate Zoe and Anita's claims of harassment and the continued rhetoric from the anti-gamergate crowd about misogyny.
The calm:
Eventually things seemed to die down (in this author's opinion) with three major exceptions. First, the social justice movement is extremely popular and widespread in western society. Authors sympathetic to the social justice cause have continued to write articles critical of gamers and the "ethics" group in increasingly high-profile publications. Second, the "ethics" group discovered the google group I discussed at the beginning of the article. Their suspicions appear to be correct, and they are continuing to push for greater transparency and improved ethics in gaming journalism. Third, some of the most prominent sites whose editors and administrators are supportive of the "social justice" cause have begun to be boycott. Sites like kotaku and polygon have had their traffic plummet in the past few weeks.
However, all of this story has occurred against a backdrop of perceived censorship across the web. Multiple subreddits have closed threads about gamergate and have issued shadowbans to people discussing it. Eventually even 4chan, which everyone expected to be supportive of gamergate, began to limit discussion. In particular, the moderation of 4chan was accompanied by posts from people claiming to be ex-mods who were purged in the past few weeks and replaced by more "social justice" leaning mods. The censorship and purging issues have always been major topics of discussion for the "ethics" crowd.
There's a lot more to the story. The efforts of /v/ to actually support female video game developers via the Fine Young Capitalists and the creation of Vivian James went a long way towards showing that gamers aren't all misogynists. Allegations that Zoe Quinn herself attempted to get that same charity shut down, and the incredible growth of her and Anita's patreon support have led to questions about the ethical position of the "anti-gamergate" crowd. These are just two examples, but I tried to stick to the main Story of Gamergate, as I understand it.
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